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Sunday, March 3, 2024

A First Time For Everything

 Being liberal has been an important part of my identity since I was a teenager.  I have always voted for Democrats.  To be honest, I'm pretty unenthusiastic about most Democratic politicians, but I generally like the party's platform.

Virginia, where I currently live, is one of the Super Tuesday states.  It is also a state that allows you to choose which party's ballot you request during the primaries.  I decided to vote early on Saturday, since our early voting location is close to the farmers market I usually visit.  I will confess that I don't always vote in the primaries.  When I've lived in other states, the primaries have often been all but decided before I even get a chance to vote.  Really, one could make a very strong case that this is true in this election as well.

And this is where it comes down to my first time voting for a Republican.  I didn't feel that there was any point in voting in the Democratic primaries because we don't have a real choice (and no, I don't count Dean Phillips as an actual choice).  There doesn't appear to really be a choice for the Republicans, either, but the idea of another Trump presidency so horrifies me that I felt compelled to try.  I voted for Nikki Haley, a politician with whom I have little to no common ground, but who I don't think is actively trying to destroy our democracy.

The funny part for me was having to actually request the Republican ballot from the election workers.  Apparently, I was very afraid of what people I don't know, and whose political leanings I don't know, thought of me.  When they asked which ballot I wanted, I said "I'll take the Republican ballot this time," hoping they would read between the lines and realize my true party affiliation.

And that's my story of expanding my horizons in a way that I never thought I would.  



Saturday, February 17, 2024

A Modern--And Decidedly First World--Problem

 Anyone else hear of our modern day, swashbuckling porch pirates?  I first saw the term on Nextdoor, a social media site I joined mostly to learn about local fireworks displays and see if anyone was giving away any good free stuff.  Suffice to say, I'm engaging pretty minimally with it, although it's occasionally good for a laugh or even some useful information.

As everyone knows, times have changed when it comes to packages.  Many of us (and I'm as guilty as anyone else) are ordering things, usually online, that we might have purchased from brick and mortar stores 20 or 30 years ago.  This means a constant stream of packages going pretty much everywhere and posing a potentially tempting target.  The flipside of this bonanza is that the packages are at least as likely to be, say, underwear or cat food as they are the newest iPhone.  In fact, in one of the times when Nextdoor entertained me, someone found an abandoned opened box of CPAP supplies on a street corner.  She kindly decided to drive it to the address on the box

We've had a series of package thefts in our condo building.  We don't have porches, but I guess you could still call the perpetrators porch pirates, since mailroom pirates doesn't quite have the same ring.  Since our building was built in the late 80's, it dates from a time when people were receiving fewer packages.  We have a little alcove with our locked mailboxes and shelves for the packages.  The going theory is that our porch pirate has been coming in behind residents who are not properly conscious of security (we've received a number of accusing emails to this effect) and then helping himself.  Someone isolated a security footage photo of this person and posted it on the outside door.  Whether this is to warn him or to shame him, I'm not sure.  We're being led to believe that this is a top priority for our city's police....

Since none of our packages have gone missing, I have the luxury of being mildly fascinated by the porch piracy phenomenon.  I've been wondering how any of these porch pirates make money off this endeavor.  How do they even decide which packages to take?  If there are too many to take them all, they have to choose a few, probably quickly.  Otherwise, they risk being stuck with the dreaded box of CPAP supplies with no resale value.  Even if they were to get something potentially resellable, how do they find a buyer?  I have limited experience selling things, but enough experience to know that it's not always easy to find any buyer at all, or in particular to get someone to pay what you think an item is worth.  All in all, it seems like a lot of risk for not very much reward.

In the case of our building, I don't think pretending that the residents are willing to get into it with someone trying to follow them into the building is going to solve the problem.  I think the problem might cost money, either collectively by paying for some sort of additional security for the packages (e.g. creating a locked package room or paying a doorman) or individually (e.g., people who are worried pay for P.O. boxes and pick their packages up).  

Just as I'm as guilty as anyone else of receiving packages, I'm also as guilty as anyone else of sometimes forgetting my own good fortune and getting upset about things that are definitely not matters of life or death.  So I'm not trying to shame anyone for being upset about their packages going missing.  I know it would bother me, too.  But I do think it's mostly a problem that stems from good fortune, both in terms of having the money to buy stuff and having this modern convenience of not having to head to stores every time you want or need something.  To name just a few areas of tremendous misfortune in the world, I think many people in Gaza, Syria, or Ukraine would be very grateful if porch piracy were the most dire problem they were currently facing.

Friday, December 22, 2023

The US Healthcare System Strikes Again

 Recently, Scott and I attempted to be savvy consumers.  His employer (a local public school district) had replaced their previous PPO health plan with one that was somehow covering fewer healthcare expenses while not becoming any cheaper.  So when open enrollment season came around, we decided to investigate the health insurance plans that my employer (another local public school district) offered.  After comparing the two of them, we decided to give one of the PPOs my employer offers a try.  Scott cancelled his health insurance during open enrollment, and I enrolled in my health insurance.  So far, so good, right?

Not quite.  I had thought that it was fairly standard for health plans that people enroll in during open season to begin coverage on January 1.  For reasons I cannot fathom, coverage under our new plan does not begin until January 14.  Meanwhile, Scott's health insurance coverage ends on January 1, leaving us with a small--but potentially financially ruinous--gap in coverage should one of us, say, develop appendicitis or get into a car accident.

Fortunately, (a) because of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), we are able to qualify for private health insurance even though I have a preexisting health condition that probably would have disqualified me previously, and (b) I discovered this impending gap in coverage before December 15.  I can't speak for all the state insurance market places, but in at least both Maryland and Virginia, you have to enroll by the 15th of one month to be covered for the first of the next month.  I knew this because this is not our first experience with buying coverage.  We were briefly on Affordable Care Act insurance plans in 2017 when we both lost our jobs and in 2019 when I was in grad school 2.0 and Scott changed jobs, triggering a gap in coverage.  

Unfortunately, it's still very expensive.  We are sinking over $600 into what appears to be a pretty crummy plan just to avoid dire financial consequences if we happen to be unlucky in the first two weeks of January.  I'm feeling particularly annoyed because I remember (some years ago and in Maryland) paying a comparable amount and getting better coverage.  I don't know whether to blame the state of Virginia or just inflation for the shoddiness of the coverage.

This has made me wish--and definitely not for the first time--that the US could just come to grips with the fact that everyone needs healthcare at some point or another and view it as a basic human right.  This idea that people will be covered through their jobs has been disastrous, what with layoffs, employers that purposely give their workers less than full-time hours to avoid paying benefits, and these sorts of awkward transitional periods like what Scott and I are experiencing now.  What's scary is that he and I were pretty much ideally suited to not have a break in coverage, what with both of us being full-time employees in public sector jobs, but yet, here we are.  I shudder to think how precarious health insurance coverage is for other people who don't have as stable of jobs, particularly those people who don't have the money to purchase private health insurance during coverage gaps.

As for us, we are going to try very hard to stay healthy and uninjured during the first two weeks in January.  We've even gone so far as to reschedule medical appointments that were originally in early January.  Ironically enough, this is $600 that I hope will just be money down the drain and not be used, and I'm hoping that the insurance we get on January 14 is amazing enough to justify all this annoyance and expense.

Saturday, December 9, 2023

The Holiday Equivalent Of The Lost Socks In The Dryer

 I'll admit I've been slow to get into the holiday spirit this year.  The pace at work has been unrelenting, and we keep having waves of sickness wash through our household.  In an attempt to get a little more with the program, I decided to start working on sending out holiday cards.  That's when I made an important discovery:

My holiday cards had gone missing.

Well, okay, there were about five left in a box that I opened last year.  But I distinctly remember buying a new box of cards after Christmas last year, in preparation for this year's card-sending.  I bought said box of cards because I had the exact same problem last year of looking for holiday cards to send and coming up short.

So, this year, some people will receive fairly traditional looking holiday cards.  Others will receive blank cards that I ordered from Shutterfly with a photo of Apamea that I took back in 2004.  I'm hoping the recipients of the Apamea cards will find them charming, or at worst, mildly idiosyncratic, rather than wondering if I've completely lost it.  People for whom I am just now getting an address may receive either an Apamea card or a yet-to-be-purchased holiday card from the supermarket.  Maybe next year will be the year when I put antlers on the cat, take a picture of her, and order a bunch of custom holiday cards from Shutterfly right before the card bonanza begins.

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

Sometimes It's Worth The Money

 Our cat Stella is a nervous and sometimes grumpy old cat.  We adopted her from a local animal shelter as an adult.  When we brought her home from the shelter, she hyperventilated and yowled the whole way.  She was initially very skittish with us, flinching even when we opened or closed the blinds.  Over the years, she's become more comfortable with us, but she has her limits.  Perhaps not surprisingly, trimming her claws is one of those limits.

We used to be able to trim a front claw or two at a time occasionally before we moved to our current home.  We think the move stressed Stella out as much as it stressed us out, and even though we've been in this home for three years, she hasn't cooperate with claw trimming.  Occasionally, Scott will be able to trim a rear claw while she's sleeping, but that's about the extent of our success.  Every time we take her to the vet, we pay for a nail trim.  But honestly, vet visits with her are stressful (and expensive!) so we try to be sparing with those.  It was becoming increasingly clear that she needed at least her front claws trimmed more often that she visits the vet.

I learned recently about a local pet sitting company that also does nail trims and other grooming at home, so I made an appointment.  I was somewhat skeptical; I was going to get charged for the visit whether the person could successfully trim her claws or not, and it seemed like an expensive gamble.  But I was also desperate.

When the pet sitter/cat groomer came over, I was immediately impressed.  She came armed with not one, but two kinds of treats that I hadn't seen before.  She made liberal use of the treats to ingratiate herself with Stella.  She also spent a good 45 minutes at our place, waiting for Stella to warm up to her before going in for the trim.  Stella made some motions of yowling and trying to get away, but honestly, it was a pretty feeble effort, and appeared to me to be more about principal than anything else (and believe me, I've seen her when she's making an honest to goodness effort to get away).  In the end, all of her front claws were trimmed and nobody got bitten or scratched in the process!  Count me impressed.

This was a good reminder to me that sometimes when you have the money, it's worth spending it to make your life easier.  This person clearly has a skill that I don't have.  Now, I don't have to worry about Stella getting her claws stuck in something or about being stabbed when she kneads her paws on me.  It's definitely a service that will become a regular expense.

Thursday, August 10, 2023

Climate Musings

 On Monday, a severe storm system swept through parts of the eastern US.  The DC area was expected to be hit hard.  Federal government offices closed early to allow their employees to get home safely (as a former govvie myself, I'm going to say that this was a very big deal).  Metro ran additional trains to help get people home in a timely fashion.  Our electric company even emailed us to warn that power outages were likely.  We were in no mood for a power outage, having lost power the previous week in another severe thunderstorm for about 11 hours.  There wasn't anything we could do, so we hunkered down and hoped for the best.

It made me think of Hurricane Fran from 1996.  I grew up in Chapel Hill, NC, which is inland and very rarely experienced severe damage from hurricanes.  On a Thursday afternoon, my high school canceled all after school activities (marching band practice, for my purposes) and canceled school for the following day.  I thought I had really lucked out, having had it with both marching band and school as a whole.  A missed marching band practice and a day off for some rain and a few downed tree limbs?  Yes, please!

Well, we woke up the next morning to find that four large trees had fallen on our car and that we had lost power.  I think the only reason we slept through the destruction was sheer exhaustion.  When we checked in on some retired neighbors, it turned out that had been up much of the night, terrified.  I forget how many days it took for power to be restored, but it was definitely multiple days. A complicating factor for us was that losing electricity meant losing water, so I remember trips in a rental car to a local creek to fill up buckets of water to flush toilets.  Let's just say my naivety regarding severe weather and closings/cancelations ended then and there.

In the end, with Monday's storm, we ended up being very lucky.  We kept power and damage in our immediate area was minimal.  But this was on the heels of a more destructive storm and part of a summer of horrific climate disasters around the world.  The environment has been my number one issue since my teens, and I have long been upset that we collectively have not been doing more to change course.  Up until recent years, I think most of us thought we had more time before we started to see severe effects of climate change, but now they are here and we are all living these effects one way or another.

Particularly in the US, a lot of blame goes to the government for not taking more action.  To be fair, there have always been some people in the government who have tried, but they have been overruled by others, many of whom I suppose thought they would be dead soon enough anyway, and were happy to leave a climate disaster to their children and grandchildren whom they profess to love.  Others have been in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry (where is campaign finance reform when we need it?).  But I am increasingly frustrated with individuals who seem to believe that government inaction is some sort of free pass to be as wasteful of resources as they want.

I'm not writing this to be sanctimonious.  I certainly have room to improve in this regard.  But there are choices we have made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as living in a smaller home, driving a hybrid vehicle, using mass transit when possible (I, for instance, use it to commute to work every day), and composting.  I have no idea why the health of the one planet where humans can live has been so politicized, but for what it's worth, I live in a fairly liberal area, and am continually blown away by both the number of gas guzzlers on the road and the number of people who refuse to use mass transit, even in an area that has pretty decent mass transit options.

Regardless of what the government does or does not do to try to save us from manmade climate disaster, we owe it to ourselves--and to the younger humans in our midst--to try.  I wrote previously about the success of our community composting program.  When enough people decide to do something, it makes a difference.  

Saturday, July 15, 2023

A Clean Bill Of Health, Part 2

 I had alluded here to my saga of the breast lump that was biopsied and found to be benign in early 2022.  The radiologist who did the biopsy told me I could consult with a surgeon to see about it being removed, but I figured it wasn't bothering me, so I wouldn't bother it.  I thought it was the end of the story.

Not quite.  I had a mammogram in April and learned that the offending lump had grown larger since it was biopsied.  The radiologist strongly recommended that I have it removed.  I, the person who spends a lot of time trying to persuade children to "use their words," responded with a series of monosyllabic grunts.

I met with a surgeon in May.  He explained that if the lump continued to grow, it could press against nerves and cause discomfort.  Also, this type of benign lump (a fibroadenoma, if anyone is interested) could sometimes obscure more problematic things.  Fortunately, since they felt it was most likely benign, they allowed me to have the surgery after the school year ended so I could recover without missing work.  I scheduled the surgery for the week after school ended.

This surgery was my first time having general anesthesia, so that was an experience in and of itself.  I still think it's truly amazing to have no recollection of anything that happened during the surgery.  The surgery itself was quick and successful.  With my lack of experience with surgery, I had a constellation of weird symptoms in the immediate aftermath that I spent a lot of time googling, including blurry vision and general allover poofiness.  There were other symptoms that I expected, like a sore throat from the breathing tube, and general fatigue and wooziness for several days.  Amazingly, the pain at the surgical site was very manageable throughout.

I had a follow-up appointment with the surgeon last week.  The lump was indeed a fibroadenoma, like they thought.  Also, there were no abnormal cells in the tissue surrounding it, so the news seems very encouraging.  I was happy to receive another clean bill of health, and hope this is truly the end of this particular saga.